SHOW AUDIO: Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast.

This program was recorded on SUNDAY, MAY 31. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13th and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

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SHOW AUDIO: Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast.

This program was recorded on SUNDAY, MAY 24. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13th and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

[Famous Ukrainian comedian] Volodymyr Zelensky won by a landslide on the back of bold promises to reform the country and end the war of attrition in eastern Ukraine.

Neither of those has happened yet. But his first 12 months in the job have been eventful and, according to the latest polls, he remains remarkably popular. …

Internationally, President Zelensky … found himself at the centre of a scandal that led to the impeachment of … Donald Trump. Then there was a furore that followed Iran’s shooting down of a Ukrainian plane.

At home he’s won praise for prisoner swaps that have brought home high-profile Ukrainians who were being held in Russian jails.

How popular is Zelensky? 35% trust Zelensky; 37% don’t, 39.3% would vote for him now, 34% still back his party. Source: ratinggroup.ua

The state of Georgia was supposed to hold an election Tuesday to fill a seat on the state Supreme Court. Justice Keith Blackwell, a Republican whose six-year term expires on the last day of this year, did not plan to run for reelection. The election, between former Democratic Rep. John Barrow and former Republican state lawmaker Beth Beskin, would determine who would fill Blackwell’s seat.

But then something weird happened: Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and the state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, canceled Tuesday’s election. Instead, Kemp will appoint Blackwell’s successor, and that successor will serve for at least two years — ensuring the seat will remain in Republican hands.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

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Even in a public health emergency, governments still have the duty to protect our rights. Yet since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, we have witnessed countless attempts by state and local agencies to infringe upon Texans’ civil liberties.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the ACLU of Texas has been monitoring government responses to the health crisis closely, and we have acted quickly to protect civil rights and civil liberties while also upholding evidence-based guidance from public health experts. Specifically, we have aggressively acted on behalf of people whose rights and health are at heightened risk, including protections for voters, people in the criminal legal system, and those seeking access to critical abortion care.

Read more about the actions we are taking during this unprecedented time:

Reducing mass incarceration in Texas jails and prisons

Victory: On April 10, a state judge granted a Temporary Restraining Order blocking enforcement of Governor Abbott’s unconstitutional executive order that limited who may be released from jails during pandemic emergency.

Like this:

This rumor that flu shots will generate a Covid-19 test positive response is FALSE! It’s a lie being spread by Buttar, who is an antivaxxer. (Link at end.)

If you are confused about what sources to trust, you’re not alone. I get this question on my radio show all the time.

1- Don’t trust FACEBOOK posts unless you can verify them.2- Same for Twitter or other social media.3- Don’t trust media reports that are outliers from the majority of media. Again, verify for yourself when in doubt. It’s not hard. It took me less than five minutes to check the “flu” lie at Snopes.com

As a rule, I like BBC.com, NBCNews.com (you don’t even have to check MSNBC, though I trust their reporting), CBSNews.com, ABCNews.com is okay, even Al-Jazeera America is a good news source overall.

When I catch news sources in lies or disinformation more than once, I stop following them. I can’t waste my time sorting their lies and distortions from facts.

I follow the saying, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

Like this:

Ending a sentence with a preposition such as “with,” “of,” and “to,” is permissible in the English language. There are theories that the false rule originates with the early usage guides of Joshua Poole and John Dryden, who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there is no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong. Nonetheless, the idea that it is a rule is still held by many.

When one looks back over the glorious and bloodstained history of grammar and usage wars, it quickly becomes apparent that many of the things which got our ancestors in a swivet no longer bother us very much. George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, was so upset that people were using you (instead of thou) to address a single person that in 1660 he wrote an entire book about it. “Is he not a Novice,” Fox wrote, “and Unmannerly, and an Ideot, and a Fool, that speaks You to one, which is not to be spoken to a singular, but to many?” The rest of us have pretty much moved on.

And then there are some prohibitions which have a curiously tenacious ability to stick around (such as not beginning a sentence with and), in defiance of common sense, grammar experts, and the way that actual people use the English language. Perhaps the most notable example of such is the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition (also known as preposition stranding, or sentence-terminal prepositions, for those of you who would like to impress/alienate your friends).

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

Joseph Malozzi has a blog that discusses projects in which he is involved, and other miscellaneous life-related things.

About 2 screens down in this post (after discussing his “It’s the #DarkMatter Greatest Episode Tournament!”), he mentions some interesting observations about response to the Covid-19 virus, and provides links to his sources.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” ~ Bill Clinton, Democratic Convention Speech (Wednesday, August 27, 2008)

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

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TOPICs: Voting Info; the Past/Present/Future of NATO in the age of Trump and Pandemic.

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

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“The answer is simple: Build in resilience as a hedge against future shocks. This foundational idea has profound implications for how we think about security, articulate strategy, and develop policies for securing the future. It inverts the old mantra that says the best defense is a good offense. When the goal is to stabilize the system, the best offense is a good defense.“

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Everything is normal. Then it’s not. The world changes. In some cases, it breaks. What you thought was strong becomes brittle. What you thought was stable
— Read on warontherocks.com/2020/04/when-systems-fail-what-pandemics-and-cyberspace-tell-us-about-the-future-of-national-security/

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.

This article has always stuck in my mind because of this quote: “In China, supervision by the media can only proceed within the existing system,” he said. “Freedom means knowing how big your cage is.” ~ Cheng Yizhong, editor of Southern Metropolis Daily (as quoted in “China’s Watchdogs Push the Limits”, By Philip P. Pan | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | August 1, 2004)

I wanted to archive its existence .

———————————————————————–

It was past 9:30 p.m. when the reporters finished writing. The presses were scheduled to begin printing the next day’s issue of the Southern Metropolis Daily in a few hours, and space for a large headline had been reserved on the front page.

But when the night editor read their story — an investigative report about a young college graduate who had been detained by local police and beaten to death in custody — he hesitated. Then he picked up a phone and called Cheng Yizhong, the paper’s star editor.

Cheng had built the Daily into this southern city’s most popular and profitable tabloid, practicing a feisty brand of journalism editors across China were trying to imitate. But a few days earlier, in a clampdown ordered by a new Communist Party leader in the province, he had been stripped of his title as editor in chief. He was now running the paper as deputy editor.

Others in the newsroom had briefed him twice about the article, but given the circumstances, the night editor wanted to check with him one last time, colleagues recalled. The story was certain to anger government officials, and there was still time to pull it. Instead, Cheng gave the order to publish.

The article, published April 25, 2003, spread quickly on the Internet, and newspapers across the country reprinted it. Reporters dug deeper, exposing abuses in a nationwide network of detention camps that purchased and sold inmates like slaves. Put on the defensive by rising public outrage, Beijing ordered the camps closed and abolished a decades-old law that gave police sweeping powers to imprison people at will.

It was a landmark victory for the Chinese press; never before had reporters influenced national policy in such a dramatic fashion. But in March, Cheng was arrested and two of his colleagues were sentenced to long prison terms in a corruption probe that party sources said was an act of retaliation by local officials.

What happened to Cheng highlights a momentous and complex struggle between the country’s increasingly independent-minded and profit-driven state media and entrenched interests inside the ruling Communist Party. The outcome could determine the future not only of journalism in China but also of the largest authoritarian political system in the world. …

“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself. Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the Republican Party, and particularly Senate Republicans. Will they ever be prepared to say enough is enough?” ~ William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate.

Pledge by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their leisure.